A Companion to D. W. Griffith
WBCF - Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Film Directors
1. Edition January 2018
624 Pages, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
The most comprehensive volume on one of the most controversial directors in American film history
A Companion to D.W. Griffith offers an exhaustive look at the first acknowledged auteur of the cinema and provides an authoritative account of the director's life, work, and lasting filmic legacy.
The text explores how Griffith's style and status advanced along with cinema's own development during the years when narrative became the dominant mode, when the short gave way to the feature, and when film became the pre-eminent form of mass entertainment. Griffith was at the centre of each of these changes: though a contested figure, he remains vital to any understanding of how cinema moved from nickelodeon fixture to a national pastime, playing a significant role in the cultural ethos of America.
With the renewed interest in Griffith's contributions to the film industry, A Companion to D.W. Griffith offers a scholarly look at a career that spanned more than 25 years. The editor, a leading scholar on D.W. Griffith, and the expert contributors collectively offer a unique account of one of the monumental figures in film studies.
* Presents the most authoritative, complete account of the director's life, work, and lasting legacy
* Builds on the recent resurgence in the director's scholarly and popular reputation
* Edited by a leading authority on D.W. Griffith, who has published extensively on this controversial director
* Offers the most up-to-date, singularly comprehensive volume on one of the monumental figures in film studies
Paolo Cherchi Usai
Introduction
Charlie Keil
I. GRIFFITH REDUX
1. Disciplinary Descent: Film Studies, Families, and the Origins of Narrative Cinema
Jennifer M. Bean
2. Griffith's Moral Profile
Ben Singer
3. "The Beauty of Moving Wind in the Trees": Cinematic Presence and the Films of D.W. Griffith - Daniel Fairfax
II. STYLE IN THE BIOGRAPH ERA
4. D.W. Griffith and the Emergence of Crosscutting
André Gaudreault and Philippe Gauthier
5. D.W. Griffith and the Primal Scene
Tom Gunning
6. Griffith's Biograph Shorts: Electric Power and Film Style, from East to West
Charles O'Brien
III. IMAGERY & INTERMEDIALITY
7. Deep Theatrical Roots: Griffith and the Theatre
David Mayer
8. Notes on Floral Symbolism, Allegory, and Intermediality in the Films of D.W. Griffith
Jan Olsson
9. Living Portraits: Signs of (the) Time in D.W. Griffith
Joyce E. Jesionowski
IV. GENDER & PROGRESSIVISM
10. Griffith's Body Language and Film Narration: "The Voluptuary" Versus "The Spirituelle"
Maggie Hennefeld
11. Cross-Dressing in Griffith's Biograph Films: Humor, Heroics, and Edna "Billy" Foster's Good Bad Boys
Laura Horak
12. Space, Gender, Oversight, and Social Change: Progressivism and the Films of D.W. Griffith, 1909-1916
Moya Luckett
13. Progressive Pastoral: Social Justice Reforms and Biograph Films, 1908-1911
Grant Wiedenfeld
V. REVISITING FAILED FEATURES
14. Gendering Ministry and Reform: Griffith and the Plight of Protestant Uplift
Anne Morey
15. "Squalid Without Being Tragic": Griffith's "Isn't Life Wonderful"
Russell Merritt
16. Faust at Famous Players
Andrew Nelson
17. Griffith in a Minor Key: Early Art Cinema Looking Backward
Kaveh Askari
VI. RECEPTION AT HOME AND ABROAD
18. "Damage Unwittingly Done": D.W. Griffith and the Re-Birth of the Ku Klux Klan
Tom Rice
19. "History by Lightning": D.W. Griffith in South Africa
Nicole Devarenne
20. Blossoms Breaking at the Dawn of Cinephilia: The Reception of D.W. Griffith in France
Annie Fee
21. The Legacy of Intolerance
Paul McEwan
